Sizing up the African state : two types of government errors

The discussion is organized around the notion of government (or non-market) failures, with particular attention to the often ignored distinction between sins of commission (government doing things it should not do) and sins of omission (government not doing things it ought to do). Study results suggest that as a region, Africa is no worse than other regions in matters of government excess. African states are not singularly more likely to spend large shares of GNP, employ high ratios of the population in bureaucratic jobs, or own extensive state-owned enterprises. When African states err by commission, they do so in relation to their own skills and resources, not to what governments are doing in other developing areas. The data on errors of omission are more equivocal. On some counts, Africa looks similar to Asia or Latin America; on other counts, it does not. While African states do leave many important tasks undone (they do too little to prevent corruption, protect civil and political rights, and secure the legal environment for business), other regions display many of the same deficiencies (though none is deficient on all the same indicators). Further, non-market failures are not evenly distributed across the continent. Botswana or Mauritius are not at all like, say, Nigeria or the former Zaire. The first two countries score high on most of the indicators presented in this paper: their readings indicate big government, competitive politics, honest administration, and friendliness to private enterprise. The Nigerian and Zairois states score low on the same measures: each is unstable, authoritarian, corrupt, and inhospitable to private enterprise. Many other sub-Saharan nations, Ghana or Uganda, for example, fall into an intermediate category. Given the degree of political diversity in the region, care must be exercised in speaking of a "typical" African state.